Preschool Teachers and Preservice Teachers’ Verbal Problem Posing Skills Related to Addition and Subtraction

The aim of this study is to examine preschool teachers’ and pre-service teachers’ verbal problem- posing skills. The data of the study was gathered from 179 third and fourth year students studying in the preschool teaching department in a public university in Adana in the 2016-2017 academic year and 93 preschool teachers working in pre-school education institutions affiliated to Provincial Directorate of National Education in Adana. The data of the study was collected by using Verbal Problem Posing Form created by the researchers. Frequency and percentage techniques were used to analyze the data. As a result of the study, it was seen that teachers and pre-service teachers were able to pose some verbal problem types correctly while they could not pose other types. A majority of both teachers and pre-service teachers were largely successful in posing joining / result unknown; joining / change unknown; separating / result unknown and separating / change unknown problem types. Furthermore, both teachers and pre-service teachers had very little success in posing part-part-whole / whole unknown; part-part-whole / part unknown; comparison / smaller unknown; comparison / difference unknown problem types. Additionally, a majority of participants were found to be unsuccessful in posing the comparison/larger unknown type of problems.